A Higher Form Of War
by Egghead
Summary: Summary: At the onset of the war against the Kaiju, Stark reflects on the prophetic words spoken by a certain thunder god. Disclaimer: I don't own Pacific Rim, Avengers or any of their characters, ok?


**A Higher Form Of War**

Summary: At the onset of the war against the Kaiju, Stark reflects on the prophetic words spoken by a certain thunder god.

_"It is a signal to the realm that Earth is ready for a higher form of war."_

In retrospect, when Goldilocks said that Earth was supposed to be ready for a higher form of war, I seriously don't think he meant the Kaijus.

But then again, NOBODY can be ready for them. Not even the Avengers.

K-Day. The day when everything changed around the world.

The titanic, hatchet headed kaiju named Trespasser emerged from a breach in the Pacific Rim and after causing a 7.1 earthquake, had gone on to attack San Francisco. It was the first time we've faced an adversary that was literally larger then life and elicited a sense of despair and helplessness like nothing else we've encountered before.

A lot of good people died during that day trying to stop it. People whom I considered friends.

The Captain fell in battle like the consummate soldier that he was, leading the military forces from the frontlines trying to slow down Trespasser's advance in order to buy the civilian population more time to flee. Rhodey had also been with him in his War Machine armor and had been in the thick of the fight till he was severely injured and left in a coma.

Fury and a large number of SHIELD agents which included Maria Hill, Jasper Stillwell and our own teammate Hawkeye lost their lives when they opted for the Kamikaze route by ramming the kaiju using the Hellicarrier alongside the smaller fighters deployed by the US Airforce. Only a handful of SHIELD agents led by a crippled Phil Coulson had survived.

Thor mysteriously vanished in mid-battle while fighting Trespasser and had not been heard from since.

Bruce lost the ability to transform into 'the other guy' after his alter ego got doused with the kaiju's noxious blue blood while battling Trespasser though we managed to treat and evacuate him.

It had been down to me and Ms. Romanov as the last remaining Avengers to continue the fight and we did just that for five straight days over San Francisco, Sacramento and finally Oakland. But even with my amazing armor and the Black Widow's lethal skills backing up conventional assault, that got old real fast when we had very little to show for our efforts.

Finally on the fifth day, the decision had been made to nuke the big, leathery bastard. It wasn't the cleanest way of killing the kaiju but under the circumstances, it was the only option left to us.

The nuke did the job. After killing millions in its rampage, Trespasser which was declared as a one in a million extinction level event was finally brought down and the threat to humanity was gone.

Or so we thought.

Little did we know that the assault on San Francisco was just the beginning.

Next to be attacked by the kaijus was Manila.

Then came Mexico.

After that was Sydney.

Each succeeding monster that attacked was bigger and stronger then the last with no signs that the trend was stopping anytime soon.

Right.

A one in a million extinction level event?

Bullshit.

This was a deliberate act of agression against humanity and steps had to be made to protect ourselves from these monstrous invaders.

Thus was born the Jaeger Program. The finest minds of the world (myself included) started working together and came up with Kaiju sized machines to combat the monstrous invaders.

Monster to fight monsters.

The first Jaeger, Brawler Yukon, made it's appearance against Karloff. It battled and had successfully killed the Kaiju, establishing to the world that the Jaeger Program was a legitimate defense against the monsters. Soon, every country was building at least one of their own.

Yet despite its apparent success, I still had a number of issues with the Jaeger Program.

Firstly, it needed two people to operate the giant, mechanical beast which, in my mind, seemed terribly inefficient. I understand that one person can't handle the neural feedback but there has got to be a better way.

Secondly, despite my objections, the Jaegers were built with a distinct lack of safety protocols for the pilots. There may have been an urgent need for them but that was no reason to disregard the operator's well being.

With these in mind, I opted to pool all my wealth and resources to start research and construction of my own Jaeger, the Iron Avenger.

In many ways, the Iron Avenger reminded me of the original armor I had constructed out of odds and ends to save my life while I was a prisoner in Afghanistan. Bulky, crude-looking and kind of low tech in comparison to my usual standards. But thanks to the Stark arc reactor I installed to run the Jaeger, Iron Avenger was not a radioactive nightmare yet packed plenty of power which was essential since raw, brute force was required to kill Kaijus though the chest mounted proton beam caster, plasma torches and the piston driven, spike studded fists would certainly help hasten the process.

More importantly, the Jaeger was uncomplicated enough to try out any new single pilot Drifting system that we may be able to come up with.

But as usual, before we could make any headway into the research of the new system, Mr. Murphy once again rears his ugly head in the form of a Category 3 ape-like Kaiju nicknamed Kong which attacks New York City. Bastard didn't even give us enough time to even devise one. Thus we had no other alternative but to hook the Jaeger's system directly into my armor so I could pilot it myself and launch the incomplete and untested Iron Avenger into it's first field test and baptism of fire against the monster.

The field test was a success as we were able to handily kill the kaiju invader using the Iron Avenger. It also gave me the inspiration of using my armor's AI system to help a pilot operate the Jaeger by himself without fear of the excess neural load. Of course, using any of my combat ready armors as drivesuits by would be overkill but a modified armor which the pilot can also use to escape and survive in the event of his Jaeger's incapacitation or imminent destruction would do just as well.

After Kong's defeat, we constructed the New York Shatterdome nicknamed Stark Resilent and staffed it with engineering crews from my own company and the remaining SHIELD personell to stand watch over our side of the world against kaijus. Pepper, being the understanding soul that she was, volunteered to be the base head while Coulson took over the reins of LOCCENT officer. Meanwhile, Happy and Natasha took it upon themselves to handle operational security inside the base, leaving me to focus my attention on the Jaegers.

That certainly helped me a lot during the time I upgraded the Iron Avenger. I replaced the plasma torches and the chest proton beam caster with repulser cannons and a unibeam caster. I even dusted off my old Jericho missile system and installed it on the Iron Avenger together with repulser based jump jets. It may still look like the old clunky Jaeger that I built but any kaiju I go up against is gonna get a hell of a surprise before I blow it to smithereens.

Eventually, Stark Industries built two more Jaegers that was based in Stark Resilent. The quad limbed Widowmaker piloted by Natasha and the heavily armed Black Patriot remotely operated by a recovering Rhodey from his place in Stark Resilent's sickbay. Now the kaijus have three times the problem if they ever decide to attack us here again.

So to those who STILL say that we stand on the threshold of humanity's extinction, I'll tell them the same words I told Loki. We may not be able to save the entire world from these kaijus, but you can be damned sure that we'll avenge it.

Thats what we're all here for. Thats what the Iron Avenger is here for.

Author's Note: Wanted to put this out for a while now. The updates should be coming in the following days. Till then, R&R pls. :)


End file.
